Today was my day to have time with my young friend Zach. He will be three in January and has grown so much in this time I was away. We spent a great deal of time today looking through a grate where the water falls through a pipe and makes circles far below, where the flowers grow, he says, and swirling sounds which we imitated. Zach jumped up and down onto the grate, and hopped around like a bunny. He is also Nemo who is wrapped in seaweed at night. He made some pictures of circles which now hang on my frig. He also goes up the slide as well as down, and down the stairs as well as up. We made a home under the play structure and were invisible. He bounced on the bridge and used the "big boy" swings. I pushed him for about 30 minutes. He likes my hand on his back as do I, and it is soothing for us both. We blew bubbles and laughed and laughed. He is so confident now and his muscles are so strong. He does pull-ups everywhere he can and interacts with other children beautifully. One little girl, probably about four years old, enticed him onto the tire swing. I swirled the swing for them both.
On the way home we sang the helicopter song, a song of his own creation. We repeat the word helicopter and toss in propeller and a few rounds and rounds, and so it goes, a little differently each time.
What enchantment it is to be with such a child. I've had my "fix" of pure joy for the week.
Joan from Chicago sends this poem by Seamus Heaney. How beautifully it fits the thrill we all feel as we further absorb the election results of last night. It brings tears to my eyes.
from The Cure at Troy
Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.
The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.
Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky
That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.
~ Seamus Heaney ~